Oct 22, 2012

Whelp...it wasn't pretty

So last week I mentioned I was going to sign myself up for a 5k this past Saturday. By Thursday of last week, my sort-of cold had turned into a full blown hacking cough, complete with drippy nose and sore throat (just in time for my "week of perfection", great!).

I decided to play Saturday by ear; I ended up taking a sick day on Friday to stay home and rest all day, and didn't exercise at all (is it weird that this made me feel guilty!?). I woke up from my NyQuil coma on Saturday feeling a bit refreshed, and felt like I was well enough to give this 5k a go.

I got there early to sign up (I was afraid to sign up earlier given my cold situation). It was a gorgeous fall day, and actually much warmer than I anticipated.

I was lined up pretty early, so I had a volunteer snap a picture of me before the start.

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The race started at 10am, and I found myself a little too close to the front of the pack; I'm a slow runner, so I typically like to hang towards the back so I don't get in the way of the more serious runners. I started off strong, but I realized very quickly that I was going too fast to keep up with the stronger runners; after only about a minute I hit a hill and my pace slowed down quite a bit, to the point where I felt like everyone participating in the race had passed me. I could see a few people running ahead, but I was basically alone!

Yeah remember how I said I felt well enough to run? Well my mucous coated lungs disagreed, and this freakin' hill was not helping. And there was no end in sight. Every time I looked up there was more and more hill. I pushed as far as I could, but eventually I felt that if I didn't stop to walk I was probably going to pass out from lack of air, and this damn hill wasn't going anywhere. So I walked. And it made it that much harder to start running again. Turns out the first 2.5 miles of this effing race were UPHILL. Who the hell does that? And who the hell would've thought a reservoir run would be UP FREAKIN HILL? I was expecting a flat run around the water, not this shit!

So yes, I walked. I ran when I could, but I felt like it just wasn't worth it to push myself to the point of passing out when I knew my lungs were not at full capacity. I managed to run the last half mile or so (mostly because it started going downhill at this point!) and according to my runkeeper, I pushed myself to finish with a pace close to a 9 min mile (what!?!), but all that walking cost me, and my official time wasn't pretty. Here's the stats from my run keeper app:

(PS, 3.4 miles!? I don't know why, but I sort of believe my app, there was a lot of winding trails we ran through and it felt wayyy longer than the 3.1 I've done at home!)

My official time on active.com is 41:43, 13:26 pace, finished 65 out of 93 total, and 12th out of 18 in my age group. I'm not exactly proud of this time or pace, but I am really proud that I pushed myself to do this even though I wasn't feeling 100%. In the past, an illness like this would have given me an excuse to lay on the couch for weeks on end because I'd be "too sick" to exercise, and I'd be stuffing my face with comfort foods because I felt sorry for myself. Not this time though! I'm hoping to run another 5k in a few weeks or so when my lungs are back to normal, but I'm going to be careful about my runs this week to make sure my lungs have enough time to heal.